Helen rises out of her
sleep; her divinity is seen struggling with her mortality, burning
through the beauty of her body. Desire wakens in Achilles, and in
Helen terror and anguish, as of one about to enter again into the pain
of mortal life. But he may not touch her till he, too, has put on
immortality. Helen prays for deliverance from the power of Aphrodite.
She rouses in Achilles a great anger against Aphrodite by reminding
him of the death of Patroclus; so that he calls down upon the goddess
the curses of all the generations of men.
It was this Act that lived in Lucia's memory. Act III she had not yet
read, but she had gathered from the argument that Pallas Athene was
there to appear to Achilles and divest him of his mortality; that she
was to lead him to Helen, whose apotheosis was supposed to be
complete; the Act concluding with two choruses, an epithalamium
celebrating the wedding of Helen and Achilles, and a Hymn in praise of
Athene.
She remembered how when Horace had first told her of the subject,
Helen in Leuce, she had looked it up in Lempriere, found a reference
in Homer and another in Euripides, had shaken her head and said, "What
can he make of that?"
Now for the first time she saw what he had made of it. Rickman's Helen
was to the Helena of Euripides what Shelley's Prometheus is to the
Prometheus of AEschylus. Rickman had done what seemed good in his own
eyes. He had made his own metres, his own myth and his own drama.
Pages:
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208